Take this fool away and kill him!" he ordered, turning
away as if there was an end of the business.
Pitiful cries broke from the lips of the unhappy professor as he
heard his death-warrant thus pronounced. He threw himself on his
knees and begged and pleaded in a loud screeching tone for a little
more time. But the chief was obdurate.
"Take him away," was all he said, and his men, not daring to disobey
his orders any longer, fairly dragged the unfortunate prisoner
toward the river bank. There was a short, sharp scream that chilled
every drop of blood in the boys' bodies and then a splash.
Professor Wiseman had paid the price of his treachery.
It was not till long after that the boys heard the full measure of
his villainy. How posing as a naturalist he had wandered up and
down the Ivory Coast for years acting as the secret agent of
Muley-Hassan and making arrangements for the smuggling of slaves and
illicitly procured ivory out of the country. He was too
accomplished a rascal to be suspected and his learned appearance
made it still more improbable that he should be engaged in any
illegal trafficking. It was small wonder, too, that he had started
when Frank mentioned the name of Luther Barr, for it was Luther Barr
whom he had betrayed to Muley-Hassan and advised him of the
whereabouts of the wily old New Yorker's ivory cache.
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